Her Place
by Khiori
Summary: Spock has to teach Saavik where she belongs. (Revised, refers to canon Pandora Principle and foreshadows canon Vulcan's Heart)


He had found her at last, the most ferocious of them all, wedged small and trembling in a forgotten duct in the darkest corner of the ship's silent hold. Spock hesitated a moment, logic warring with the alien twinge in his side, and then settled slowly to the deck. The metal was chill, making his skin instantly gooseflesh but he ignored the discomfort resolutely.

Some things were worth any discomfort.

He remembered, at the last moment, to rest his hands where she would be able to see them.

The silence of the hold enveloped him. The air smelled stale, as if had been forgotten, too.

Spock firmed his shoulders. "What happened, Saavikam?"

There was the softest of scrapings as the child disappeared further into the protective shadows of her makeshift hollow.

He forced himself to wait. He recited mathematical algorithms to pass the time. And just when even Vulcan patience had reached its limits, she was suddenly _there_ ; huddled shivering against the icy deck near his feet, head down.

She had torn off her new clothes entirely.

Spock felt pain. "Tell me," he said quietly.

The small far too skeletal thin shoulders merely hunched further. Bracing for additional pain, he realized. The silence between them grew terrible. Final.

He studied her desperately, wishing for the thousandth time since the ship had left Hellguard that his mother were here. Science, he knew. Logic. Facts. Saavik, however, was none of these. And again the old childhood fear of failing made him uncertain. Made him . . . less.

Then two eyes that seemed to hold all the misery of worlds in them looked slowly up and, curiously, he found that it did not matter what he felt at all.

Spock pulled his uniform tunic off, refusing to acknowledge the way his bare chest immediately began to splotch with the frigid cold, and worked it gently over her unruly-haired head. It took a bit more effort to get her small arms through the sleeves, and he felt an illogical pleasure at watching those eyes widen in first surprise and then awe, her small chilled fingers instinctively clutching the still warm gift that in her feral world had been second only to sustenance in preciousness.

Saavik responded by scrabbling closer, peering up at him so hesitantly and yet so anxiously that Spock's eyebrow lifted.

"Youlikes Saavik now? Wants now? Keeps now?"

Spock actually blinked. "What?"

The sharp chin immediately lowered.

Something unpleasant slowly occurred to him. "Saavik, did someone tell you I did not?"

She said nothing.

Spock fought frustration. And something far darker. "Saavik, we have discussed this. I will be your teacher. You will be my student. Why would I change my mind?"

The child began to pick at his shirt's smooth fabric with worrying fingers, the now all too familiar scowl making her small features darkly Romulan.

He waited.

"Fights," she whispered, mournfully.

He tilted his head. "Socialization classes will stimulate correct interactive-"

"Cursings."

"Introduction to a complete language system will provide more appropriate alternative linguistic choices-"

"Takes," she mumbled.

"Confidence in the ability to acquire and retain necessities will-"

"Kills."

"Instillation of a primary foundational ethics system-"

"Hates."

"Psychological sessions will assist in mitigating the natural response to extreme abusive-"

"Notvulcan," she barely breathed, agonized. And she lifted her face and he saw that her too old eyes burned in abject suffering.

And he knew what had happened.

Someone had told her her 'place'.

And Spock's whole soul suddenly grieved.

It had been inevitable.

Vulcans should not be cruel.

But he knew all too well that they could be.

His shoulders bowed and for a long moment, he found he could not raise his head. Memories long firmly buried rose up, and they were as painful and ugly to him now as they had been too the small lonely boy he had once been.

Mercy was not, after all, logical.

"I grieve with thee, Saavikam," he said hoarsely.

The little girl reacted instantly panic stricken. "Youdies, Spock?" She crushed herself up against his, small fingers clutching the fabric of his trousers with a death grip as she tried to search his eyes with her own desperate ones.

And Spock felt a truly genuine warmth that swept the past away.

He was not alone any more.

No, mercy was not logical. But it was, nonetheless, _needed_.

"I live."

"Whys grieves?" Saavik tilted her head first to one side and then the other, trying hard to understand.

It hurt him profoundly to realize that it hadn't even occurred to her that his grief might be for _her_.

"When you suffer, it grieves me. Saavikam, you are important to me."

It was almost as if she had suddenly turned to stone, so shocked into absolute stillness that he realized that she wasn't even breathing. Her eyes seemed to stare into his very soul and he found himself holding his breath as he waited suddenly anxious for her to believe what all her life's bitter and bloody experience had told her was _impossible_.

That she had value to _someone_.

He focused all his will into those eyes, letting her see the truth unshielded in his own.

"Yous . . . yous . . . _Saavik?_ "

"Yes."

" _Whys?_ "

And he told her the absolute truth. He could not tend all the surviving misbegotten children of Hellguard. But Saavik . . . . That feeling that he should not, no _could not_ , leave her fate in another's hands remained as powerfully strong in his chest as it had at their beginning. Saavik _mattered_ to him. She _fit_ with him.

No, no, it was _more_ than that.

More intimate.

With Jim, he had found a friend and brother.

With Saavik . . . . With Saavik, it was like he had found a piece of himself that he hadn't even known was missing.

For the first time in his life he truly wasn't alone.

It was like . . . it was like . . . .

"We are the same," he said in soft realization.

Saavik's gaze went unwillingly from him to the hold's closed doors and she turned her small face away from him, suddenly seeming very little and . . . almost fragile.

"Not," she whispered, sorrowfully, her broken nailed fingers twisting themselves painfully in his tunic. " _Not_. Yous _Vulcan_ , Spock. Saavik . . . Saavik . . . ."

He took a long breath. "Saavik is half-Vulcan."

Her head lowered, ashamed with her whole battered and brutalized child's soul of what she was.

As the Romulans, Hellguard and now Vulcan had more than brutally taught her she _should_ be.

Spock made a silent vow to the Multiverse that he would change that.

"Saavik," he said quietly. She would not look at him but he knew she was listening again. "Saavik is half-Vulcan. As Spock is half-Vulcan. We are the same."

Slowly her head lifted as her mouth opened in the second profound shock of her young tortured life. He waited patiently for her to process, watching the battle between complete disbelief in his words and her utter trust in him.

"Not! Not lives _there!_ Youcome! Saavik _sees!_ "

Obscurely, it pleased him to see her mind responding logically even while emotionally triggered.

"That is true. Perhaps, I was not as precise as I should have been."

"Tells!" she demanded.

"My father is Sarek."

The child winced. "Vulcan _Vulcan!_ "

He managed to keep the glint of humor out of his eyes. But only barely. "And my mother is Amanda."

Saavik's brow wrinkled hard as she tilted her head, trying to match the name with a face from the ship. "Not sees?"

He nodded. "Correct. She is not here."

"Dies?" Her eyes were dark with far too many horrors.

Spock shook his head. "No."

She brightened instantly and looked up instinctively, even though only the darkness of cold grey metal vaulted overhead. "Gos ins my stars?"

It fascinated him still how dearly and possessively Saavik viewed the stars.

Almost a primal worship, yet curiously without any of the mystical trappings that would designate it as such.

It was very near unheard of for a feral to focus on anything outside of the immediate, tangible and necessary for survival. And true to established psychological models, none of the other Hellguard children gave more than even an occasional cursory glance out any of the ship's view ports.

Saavik, however, even when first brought aboard and was more skin and bones barely held together by filth and rage than child, had preferred watching them to _eating_.

It had completely thrown even his father.

Especially when she continued to use the proper Vulcan word for them.

Who had bothered to teach a feral child anything besides pain?

Suddenly his mind brought up the brutally burned T'Pren as his hands reached for the psi points on her dying face.

And he remembered her desperate failing mind showing him a horror he would never have thought possible before.

The secret of Hellguard.

Where Vulcan children were dying in ways he doubted would ever leave his nightmares again.

T'Pren had been fiercely adamant of it to her last agonized gasp.

They were not Romulan children. Not half-breed children.

They were _Vulcan_ children.

They mattered to her.

If anyone would have bothered to teach anything of Vulcan to Saavik, it should have been her. The one who fought so hard and suffered so long to give him their existence. Who was so determined that he see them as worthy of rescue. All in the dying grieving hope that he would dare war to save them. That, more specifically, he would dare to save _Saavik_.

But Saavik had shown no recognition response to T'Pren's file image.

Spock did not understand.

How could a child so obviously important to T'Pren not even recognize her?

Who then had taught her something as lovely and pure as the joy of the stars? Was it instead one of the other Vulcan prisoners?

If so, why didn't Saavik ever speak of that one?

Or react to any of their images?

What was he _missing?_

Spock forced his mind set the confusion aside. Truth had its own way of revealing itself. And its own time. He must be patient.

Saavik growled at him, demanding his wandering attention return to her immediately. " _Spock!_ Gos ins my stars?"

 _Very_ patient. He took a deep breath.

"A generalization but, yes. My mother, however, is Human."

She tilted her head hard at the new word. "Whatsays?"

He chastised himself. Of course she would not know what a Human was. She knew only Hellguard and the ship so far. It truly appalled the exploratory Science Officer in him. And the lover of knowledge.

He tried again, returning to what she _did_ know. "My mother is . . . _not_ Vulcan."

Her utterly astounded expression would have been almost comical if he did not remember all the years this very distinction had brought him suffering.

And shame only an adult's understanding had finally eased.

Saavik's eyes were impossibly huge, incredulous with the sudden revelation that there were more beings than she had previously thought even existed. " _Not?_ "

"Not," he confirmed.

He watched her mentally wrestle with the literally alien concept.

"Sames Vulcan, not Romulan yes Human?"

He felt a sense of relief that he had successfully managed to explain the concept to her. "Yes."

And then her eyes held such suffering for _him_.

"Yous . . . yous sonabastard." she whispered, mournfully, touching him gently, awkwardly, in what he suddenly realized was her first attempt to impart comfort to another living being.

Saavik's mind had a fascinating logical turn.

Even as it was painful.

"Ah," he cleared his throat, "no. We are both half-Vulcan but we are not both, ah . . . ." And was very thankful they were having this conversation out of his father's hearing.

She tilted her head first one way and then the other, trying valiantly to understand. And failing. "Hows Spock? Hows yous sames yes hows sames not not sonabastard?"

The problem, he now realized, was more than her horrifically limited _vocabulary_ , which disturbingly even a sehlat outnumbered in understanding. It was that Hellguard had given her the same abysmally limited understanding in regards to _concepts_.

Beyond shame, horror, pain and death.

How did one explain love and marriage and a family to one who had only known hate and rape and an outcast state?

Saavik didn't even know the words for him to _begin_.

Frustration opened up in Spock.

And then abruptly, he stilled.

Or did she?

He took a deep breath, feeling his conceptual way out to her.

"Amanda . . . goes with Sarek. _Stays_."

That had her complete incredulous attention. " _Stays?_ "

"Stays," he confirmed solemnly.

Saavik leaned closer, staring into his eyes as if she could see to his very soul. "Sarek . . . _keeps_ Amanda?"

"Yes."

Now, he recognized, Saavik had the disturbingly deadly focus on her face he had seen when she was hunting. Her whole self was in unrelenting attention to him with an intensity that actually made him . . . uneasy. What had he just missed? What had he said that had triggered such importance to her?

She was now so close to him, that he could feel her uneven breathing against his skin.

" _Whys?_ Whys _keeps_ Amanda?"

Whole libraries had been written trying to answer that question.

Philosophy, psychology, the Vulcan heart. Yet, these would hold no meaning yet to her.

But her desperately fearfully intense eyes told him that Saavik _needed_ a true answer from him.

And he suddenly realized why.

 _Someone had told her her 'place'._

She had torn off her prized treasure of new clothes.

She had fled as far from anyone as she could get in the ship.

And she had hidden alone shivering in the darkness until he found her.

Because Saavik was . . . heartbreakingly afraid of what that _meant._

 _Youlikes Saavik now? Wants now? Keeps now?_

He had not yet answered her.

Spock looked into Saavik's eyes and saw what Hellguard's inheritance truly meant for the first time.

 _Nothingness._

The child who had so awkwardly but truly offered him comfort had still not been comforted by him in return.

 _Someone had told her her 'place'._

But that bitter destiny would not be hers.

He would see to it.

Because Saavik . . . Saavik meant he wasn't alone any more.

"He keeps her because she is his stars."

The terrible wistful starving _longing_ in her eyes tore at his very soul and he knew he had at last said something she entirely _understood_.

Then Spock reached out very slowly and very gently and touched first Saavik and then his own chest.

"Same," he said, softly. " _Same_."

And he gave her a new place to be.

With him.


End file.
